Rose

“The thing I remember most vividly from that weekend is a small thing. We were walking, you and he and Julia and I, down that little path lined with birches that led to the lookout. (Back then it was a narrow throughway, do you remember that? It was only later that it became dense with trees.) I was with him, and you and Julia were behind us. You were talking about, oh, I don’t know—insects? Wildflowers? You two always found something to discuss, you both loved being outdoors, both loved animals: I loved this about both of you, even though I couldn’t understand it. And then you touched his shoulder and moved in front of him and knelt and retied one of his shoelaces that had come undone, and then fell back in step with Julia. It was so fluid, a little gesture: a step forward, a fold onto bended knee, a retreat back toward her side. It was nothing to you, you didn’t even think about it; you never even paused in your conversation. You were always watching him (but you all were), you took care of him in a dozen small ways, I saw all of this over those few days—but I doubt you would remember this particular incident.

But while you were doing it, he looked at me, and the look on his face—I still cannot describe it, other than in that moment, I felt something crumble inside me, like a tower of damp sand built too high: for him, and for you, and for me as well. And in his face, I knew my own would be echoed. The impossibility of finding someone to do such a thing for another person, so unthinkingly, so gracefully! When I looked at him, I understood, for the first time since Jacob died, what people meant when they said someone was heartbreaking, that something could break your heart. I had always thought it mawkish, but in that moment I realized that it might have been mawkish, but it was also true.

And that, I suppose, was when I knew.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Let’s say that the average age in the audience is twenty-five years. Six hundred times twenty-five equals fifteen thousand years of human experience assembled in that darkness—well over twice the length of recorded human history of hopes, dreams, disappointments, exultation, tragedy. All focused on the same series of images and sounds, all brought there by the urge, however inchoate, to open up and experience as intensely as possible something beyond their ordinary lives.”
― Walter Murch, In the Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing

“I could have kept silent for ever, but we believe that the more we love someone, the more secrets we should tell them, teling often seems like a gift, the greatest gift one can give, the greatest loyalty, the greatest proof of love and commitment. You're rewarded for telling secrets. It isn't enough just to speak, to utter fiery words that are soon extinguished or even become repetitive. Nor are they enough for the person listening. The person speaking is as insatiable as the person who listens, the person speaking wants to hold the attention of the other for ever, wants to penetrate as deeply with his tongue as he can ("the tongue as raindrop, the tongue in the ear," I thought) and the person listening wants to be kept entertained, wants to hear and know more and more, even things that are invented or false. Perhaps Teresa didn't or rather would have preferred not to know. But I blurted something out to her, I didn't control myself, not enough, and then she couldn't go on not wanting to know, she wanted to know, she had to listen.”
― Javier Marías, A Heart So White

“The theatrical/cinematic experience is really born the moment someone says, “Let’s go out.” What is implicit in this phrase is a dissatisfaction with one’s familiar surroundings and the corresponding need to open oneself up in an uncontrolled way to something “other.” And here we have the battle between motion pictures in the home and cinema, for I’ll venture that the true cinematic experience can’t be had in the home, no matter how technically advanced the equipment becomes.”
― Walter Murch, In the Blink of an Eye